Silver Treetop University
by Solo Ensemble
Summary: Just a short fluff piece about Liz and Jason getting together to study in college.


**Prompt: Decadence isn't easy.**

**Note: **This is entirely ridiculous. Also, _Eugene Onegin _is a novel by Aleksandr Pushkin, for future reference. This is for Amanda (DramaPrincess87) who finds the meaning of a Bunbury as hilarious and true as I do. Also, the standard: not enough time, absolutely abhor how I ended it, too-bad-too-sad for me.

* * *

**Silver Treetop University**

"Yeah, I'm free right now…What?...Uh, yeah, sure, I'll come over…Okay, give me a minute and I'll be right over…Right. Bye."

His suitemates looked up as Jason clicked off his cell phone and turned around, trying to find his own textbooks buried in the clutter.

"Who was it?" Jasper Jacks grinned from his seat on the windowsill overlooking the quad. "Sonny, I bet you twenty it was the Missus."

"Of course it was her," the other boy scoffed, shooting his best friend a grin as Jason rolled his eyes. "Every time she wants to meet up, he runs out of here like his damn pants were on fire."

Johnny O'Brien laughed at that. "Yup, he's whipped all right."

Jason scowled and launched a worn paperback copy of _Paradise Lost_ at his basketball teammate's head. "Knock it off, O'Brien, or I'm replaying the message Lu left on my cell for you."

The Irishman paled and instantly became apologetic. "I didn't mean nothin', Jason, you know that. Elizabeth's real nice."

"Yeah, she is," Jagger Cates agreed, smirking from behind his anatomy textbook. "Now go _study_, Jason."

The boys snickered at the obvious suggestive meaning in the boy's words, but Jason only frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Johnny seemed to have forgotten the threat that had been issued only moments ago. "Oh, come on, Jase, buy a clue. Lu's always inviting me to her dorm to 'study' – I have yet to crack open my textbook."

"That might explain the less-than-stellar grades you're pulling, chief," Jagger snickered, pulling a pencil out from behind his ear and scratching something in the margins of his own book.

"Hey, that's the mark of a real genius, asshole," Johnny huffed, clearly offended. "-To be able to pass a class without even buying a damn textbook."

"Yeah, 'to be able to' being the operative phrase," the other boy muttered, burrowing back comfortably into one of the lumpy couches they kept in the common room. "Better get out of here, Jase – don't want to keep Elizabeth waiting," he added with a knowing grin.

Jason rolled his eyes, grabbing a black fleece pullover to ward off the December chill. "Guys, this is _Elizabeth _– what do you honestly think is gonna happen?"

"She's gonna jump your bones," Sonny replied with a broad smile, looking up from the copy of _The Bell Jar_ in his lap. "It's the sweet, little ones you gotta watch out for, man."

Jason paused with his hand on the door. "You really think so?"

"It's like the time Lu told me to get to her dorm because a bird got in through the windows," Johnny informed him, getting up to grab his sociology notebook and a soda. "I got there five minutes later and miraculously, the bird had just flown out. So since I was already there and she had nothing to do, we spent the next half hour fooling around. Have fun."

"Yeah, one of us at least has a chance of getting some action tonight," Sonny grimaced.

Johnny grinned when Jason looked at the Cuban, confused. "Sonny's little men have been out of commission since he slept with that cheerleader – Sam something or other," he supplied helpfully as the young man in question scowled.

Jack's eyes widened and the Australian stared at Sonny. "You slept with Sam McCall?"

"Yeah," Sonny growled, trying to suddenly pay attention to his novel. "And got the syph to show for it."

Jason snickered at the disbelief on Jack's face. "Dude, me, too – I slept with her two weeks ago and got the same."

"What have I been saying all along?" Johnny asked his fallen comrades. "I hear what Lulu and the other cheerleaders say about the McCallgirl – she's a walking V.D. factory. Spencer and Nik Cassidine both caught the syph about three weeks ago – and at roughly the same time, too," he added, holding up his hands. "I'll let you make the connection yourself."

Sonny's face had darkened as he scowled at Jack. "I can't believe we _all_ caught the syph from her."

"I say you deserve it, if you were dumb enough to sleep with her in the first place," Jason remarked as he grabbed his books despite Johnny's sniggers. "Hey, man, decadence isn't easy – but Sam sure is. And for her, it's all in a day's work."

Johnny was laughing at that. "Hey, Jase, be sure you snag some penicillin from the Science Center on your way back for these dipshits."

Jason just laughed and stepped out into the hall as Johnny O'Brien was fairly buried under an onslaught of paperbacks and notebooks.

* * *

He could hear her music in the hallway as Jason walked toward the door to the suite that Elizabeth shared with Brenda Barrett, Lily Rivera, and Lulu Spencer. Today, she was going with Bowie – excellent choice, naturally, but then again, Elizabeth had the best taste in music among all his female friends.

She opened the door before he could even knock, and Jason had to grin when he saw the beaming smile on her face. "Come on in, Jason," she urged, grabbing his arm and tugging him into the warm common room. Unlike his own common room that he shared with Sonny, Jack, Jagger and Johnny, the girls' room was actually clean. He spotted a bunch of Brenda's fashion magazines stacked neatly on an endtable, arrangements of Lily's handmade paper flowers all around the room, and Lois' potted plant named Ferny that was just another member of the ragtag family. And of course – Elizabeth's candles. The brunette had candles on every flat surface, and tonight she had lighted all of them and thrown open the curtains to let in the moonlight reflecting off the snow; it was the artist in her that absolutely adored the interplay between light and shadow, and Jason couldn't say that he minded. The common room looked rather…romantic, in fact.

Shaking his teammates' voices out of his head, Jason plopped down onto the couch and swept Brenda's magazines to the floor, depositing his own books on the coffee table instead. Elizabeth moved to get her own books and dropped them next to his before sitting down on the couch as well. Since the lumpy red sofa – which she loved for some unknown reason – was so small, their legs brushed due to their proximity.

"You know, I swung by the Boiler house earlier today," she remarked, referring to the student lounge that was built around boilers dating back to the civil war. "Sonny and Jack are usually in the basement, but they weren't there today. You could have invited them over to study, too, you know – we do have a couple of the same classes."

Jason frowned at that, for he had begun to think that Johnny might have had a clue as to what he was talking about earlier. "Uh, yeah, they're not feeling too good so they're back at the suite."

"Are they sick?" The concern was evident on Elizabeth's face. "Because you know, I've got a great cure-all. Lemme boil some water and grab the honey – damn, I hope I can find Brenda's thermos-"

"Elizabeth, it's fine," he chuckled, wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her back down onto the couch. The laughter died on his lips when she fell into his lap, and Jason held his breath as she slowly climbed off and perched herself next to him. "It's not…that kind of sickness."

"What do you mean?" she asked, still concerned. "You know, there is something going around campus, Jason."

"Yeah," he grinned. "It's the syph."

His bluntness shocked her for a minute, but then Elizabeth began to laugh. "Oh, God, you're kidding me. I thought it was bad enough when Lucky and Nick got it within a day of each other. Tell me one thing," her sapphire eyes glittered wickedly. "Is it the same culprit?"

Jason grinned and grabbed his copy of _The Importance of Being Earnest_. "I'm not saying anything."

"Oh, ew!" Elizabeth was almost beside herself with wicked laughter. "Sick! You know, I always thought those two were smart – then they had to go and do something like that! Oh, man, Lu is gonna flip when she hears."

"With Johnny's mouth, I bet she already has," Jason muttered. "That kid's worse than a girl sometimes."

The remark earned him a slap on the shoulder. "Not cool, Morgan." He smirked at Elizabeth, who narrowed her eyes and reached across him for a paperback novel on the table, letting him catch a whiff of her perfume. "Okay, let's do this. I'm going to pull quotes and you have to tell me the character that said them and the significance, and then you're going to quiz me on time periods and writing styles, okay?" She caught him frowning at her and paused. "What?"

"So we're really gonna study, huh?" He couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. He and Elizabeth had been spending a lot of time together over the past semester and he had kind of gotten the feeling that she was interested in him. Plus, Johnny and Lu were always egging him on to make a move, and he didn't feel he was too far off base.

She was staring at him, confused. "Well, yeah, what did you think we were gonna do?"

"I-nothing. Forget it. Hand me my notebook."

The brunette narrowed her eyes and held the notebook in question behind her back, shaking her head. "Uh-uh, not so fast, Morgan. What did you think we were gonna do?"

"Nothing," he replied defensively, grabbing the book and pulling it away from her. "Oscar Wilde and the Age of Decadence – go."

But Elizabeth wasn't biting. "You thought we were gonna make out, didn't you?"

His mouth fell open, inviting her laughter, and Jason squirmed. "Not really…"

"No, no, wait a minute," she mused playfully, tapping her chin and pretending to think it over. "It's not that outlandish – I mean, I guess I would, if you were amazingly cute or something." She could read the shock in his eyes and reached for her worn paperback copy of _Eugene Onegin_. "Well, you are, but not as cute as Pushkin."

He frowned and was about to challenge that when it occurred to him to try another tack. Pretending to relent, he settled back on the couch and began to flip through his copy of Wilde. "Fine. In any case, since she's doing _Earnest_, we'd better know how to explain what a Bunbury is. And tagging along with that, I bet you anything she'll have an essay question asking us to connect fiction and Bunbury – like, how is fiction itself a Bunbury? That's not that hard – look at page twenty-seven."

Elizabeth blinked as Jason nonchalantly went back to work, underlining certain lines in his text and reading them aloud so she'd know what he was talking about. He glanced up a moment later and caught her pouting at him. "I wasn't serious, you know?"

He'd hung out with ultimate hooligan Sonny Corinthos long enough to know how to feign innocence. "Wasn't serious about what?"

Unfortunately, the tactic didn't work as well for him as it usually did for his best friend; instead, Jason got a kick square to the side before Elizabeth grabbed the book from his hand and threw it over her head onto an armchair behind her.

"About studying," she smirked, scooting closer until she was practically on his lap again. Jason sucked in a breath when she played with his hair, situating herself more comfortably across his long legs. "That is, unless there's a certain part of Wilde that's giving you some trouble…"

Well, he wasn't too sure about Wilde, but there was a certain part of his _body_ that was giving him some trouble at the moment. Clearing his throat, Jason stilled her wandering hands and pulled her closer until their noses almost touched. "Can't think of anything," he murmured.

"Looks like we're all caught up on the reading, then," she purred, whispering her lips over his and waiting for his reaction.

But Jason stayed serious, though the twinkle in his eyes gave him away. "Looks that way. It'd be a shame to waste the night, though."

Elizabeth pulled back and winked cheekily at him. "You have to admit, studying was a pretty good Bunbury, though."

**The End.**


End file.
